Bright Midnight by Halle, Karina (ereader android TXT) 📕

Anders creeps through my thoughts, like a ghost. I can still see him, smell him, like eight years ago was yesterday. It’s all emotion. That jolt. Those clammy-hands and speeding pulses and shivers that shake you to the core. It’s the emotions of my first love all wrapped up in one misleading, pathetic little package.

But Anders wasn’t just that first love for me, he was so much more. He was the one person who made me feel like I had a home, even though he was the foreigner in a strange land.

And it’s sad. So damn sad. Because, really, if I should be pining over anyone, it should be Danny. He’s the man I was traveling with, living with in Brooklyn, who stole my heart in college, who made me forget Anders and led me to believe that not all men are born to hurt you, that not all men will screw you over. Naturally, that was a lie. Danny was no better than Anders in the end, maybe a bit more honest, but he still left just the same.

“That’s what men do,” my mother once said. “They leave.” She was right about that and wrong about so much else.

By the time I get back to my hotel, the day has caught up with me and I’m exhausted. I climb into the cushy bed, bringing the covers over me to protect against the incessant air conditioning I can’t figure out how to turn off, and close my eyes to my second day in Norway.

Tomorrow I start again.

2

Shay Then

“What do you think Jeremy Renshaw’s dick looks like?” Everly whispers.

I nearly spit out the mouthful of Sprite, my hands flying up to my lips. Good thing, because if one of the librarians saw I snuck a soft drink in here, she’d have my head. I don’t know why I’m always their number one target.

When my coughing fit gets under control, I give her a loaded look and whisper right back, “I thought you’d already seen his dick.” I pause, wagging my brows. “And then some.”

Everly rolls her eyes, but there’s that telltale flush on her cheeks. Maybe she hasn’t seen it, but she wants to. I know that much about her. She wants to see everyone’s dick.

Me, on the other hand? They scare the living pants off of me—and not in a good way. Plus, you know, there isn’t a single boy at this school that I’d be curious about.

Or there hadn’t been until recently.

Last year, when we were in eleventh grade, I’d had some fantasies about losing my virginity to Elliot Zane, who was a year older. But he’s since graduated and now I’ve got either the boys in my grade or the ones below. Everly says I can’t afford to be picky and she’s probably right, but even so.

“I heard that Jenny Bishop hooked up with him over the weekend,” Everly whispers, her eyes darting around her. It wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve talked about someone to find them standing behind us or within earshot. High school is just one big instance of people overhearing things.

I want to make a remark about Jenny Bishop hooking up with everyone, but decide it makes me look jealous and petty. This is something I’ve kept from Everly, even though she’s my best friend, but I’ve always been jealous of the girls who get around. The idea of sex just has me so uptight and nervous, I wish I could just sleep with whomever I wanted. But being naked, that intimate, with someone…I’m already feeling flushed, my hands clammy, just thinking about it.

And it’s not just the sex thing. I kind of wish people gossiped about me the way that Everly and I gossip about everyone else. Sounds stupid, I know—who in their right mind would want to be a part of the rumor mill? But sometimes I think I’m not in my right mind.

“Oh my god, there he is,” Everly says in a hush.

“Jeremy?” I ask, following her gaze to the entrance to the library.

But it’s not Jeremy at all.

It’s Anders. Anders Johansen, the foreign exchange student from Norway.

And my current obsession.

I try not to stare. It’s hard not to.

Anders just moved here a few weeks ago, making him now the second tallest guy in our grade (after Nick “Smu” Rodham, who plays on the basketball team). He’s got longish dark hair that curls a little at the nape of his neck, dark grey-blue eyes, and the facial hair that most guys our age would only dream about growing. Plus, he’s got the sexiest accent and tattoos. He’s the quintessential brooding bad boy, like Heathcliff was transported from the Wuthering Heights book we had to read last year and plunked down in our school, wandering the halls instead of the moors.

“He’s so hot,” Everly says dreamily. “Though also a little scary.”

“Scary?” I ask, watching as Anders stops in the middle of the library and looks around, one thumb hooked under the strap of his backpack, looking effortlessly cool. “Why, just because he wears all black?”

“Yeah,” she says breathlessly. “But it’s a good kind of scary.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever.” Everly may want to see everyone’s dick, but hearing her talk about Anders that way really gets my hackles raised.

I mean, I know I lay no claim to him. He talked to me in the halls one day and I was a goner after that. He has a way of staring at you so intensely that it makes you want to do the same to him. When he’s not looking of course. Over the last few weeks I’ve become really good at looking at him when he doesn’t know it.

Now, though, I’m failing.

Because he just looked our way.

And met my eyes.

Shit.

“Oh no!” I cry out, trying to hide behind the Sprite. “He just looked at me!”

“And now he’s walking over here,” Everly says, way too gleefully.

“What?!” My heart feels like it’s going to leap out